Thousands of vehicles are on the road every day, and most reported accidents involve cars, trucks, bikes and even pedestrians. Alcohol is sometimes the cause, but according to statistics, speed and bad driving by sober drivers are the main factors of road accidents. Bad driving happens when vehicles are going too fast, tail-gaiting, and drivers slam on the brakes.
Road safety is a major concern for government, companies and the general population. Often drivers acquire bad driving habits that turn out to be dangerous. These habits are amplified in magnitude when these people drive heavy trucks or buses. They eventually forget basic principles they learned in preventive driving, they go too fast and do not use any defensive techniques. This often translates in over-usage of the vehicle's brakes.
For large trucks, a variety of systems are available that provide additional information on the driver's performance. Whenever this information is downloaded, it provides data on speed, acceleration, deceleration, usage of brakes, shifting of gears, engine temperature, time that engine is left running on idle and other situations. The computer readings can advise drivers of faulty driving habits and even the exact location where it happened. The company can get a reading on a driver's habits over the past few hours, days or weeks. Correction of these driving habits and training can be the solution.
However, these monitoring computers are very expensive and thus inaccessible for all but the richest companies. Besides, companies that use this technology are sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of information being recorded, thus making the information useless and unmanageable. Most important of all, these systems do not offer much assistance to promote preventive driving because they provide such information after the fact.